FREE THE WEED 64
A Column by John
Sinclair
Highest greetings
from Amsterdam, where I’m spending the summer in a very interesting section of
the city called the Bijlmer that used to be a terrible fear-ridden slum on the
outskirts of town but has been redeveloped by the government as a sort of
art-centered multi-cultural neighborhood populated by people of many
descriptions, from dark-skinned immigrants to young white urban professionals
with real jobs and a certain quotient of bohemians both black and white.
The interesting
thing is that, unlike in the States, the immigrant population of the former
ghetto was not expelled to make the renovated area “safe’ for white people but was included in
the redevelopment plans and rehoused as an integral component of the upgraded
neighborhood. The oppressive 1950s-style Stalinistic eight-storey project
dwellings were razed and replaced with buildings of no more than four floors
and the whole thing painted in bright colors marked by diagonal stripes of
orange, yellow, green, bright blue, and lots of third-world murals.
I’m staying in the
spacious apartment of a new friend named Tariq Khan, a Dutch Rastafarian with
big dreads who started out as a rapper called MC Lazy but now is an energetic
artistic and cultural activist with his own recording studio in the building
around the corner that also houses a hip-hop radio station called Hot Twenty
that’s staffed by local youths. Tariq also produces and directs video shoots
for many purposes and conducts youth workshops for community groups, but his
day job is working for the Sensi Seeds empire at the Hash, Marijuana & Hemp
Museum one day, the Cannabis College the next and the Sensi Museum Gallery on
Thursdays, where he joins my old friend Joseph who mans the vaporizer and gets
people high all day.
What a job! Joseph
has been around for a long time and knows everybody who’s into anything in
terms of the cannabis culture—he’s even regarded as a spiritual leader in some
advanced quarters—so I turned to him when I was desperate to find a place to
lodge for the summer after my week-long residency in the Sensi guest quarters
was up at the end of May. He hooked me up with Tariq, and Tariq took me
straight to his place in the Bijlmer and set me up like a champ.
Sensi Seeds is a remarkable
enterprise started by a guy named Ben Dronkers in Rotterdam a long time ago,
first as one of Rotterdam’s initial coffeeshops and then as a way to get
marijuana growing in Holland by supplying top-quality seeds and encouraging
local growers to plant and harvest them. Over the past 30 years Sensi has grown
into a mammoth operation known as “the most comprehensive cannabis seed bank in
the world,” dispensing millions of seeds to funky farmers all over the world
and then pioneering the revitalization of the hemp industry as well.
As the Sensi Seeds website explains, Ben
Dronkers started growing marijuana in 1975 and began saving the seeds he found
in good quality weed, eventually collecting and categorizing all the cannabis
seeds he could find. From the end of the 70s until the mid-80s Ben travelled
the world from Central Asia and the Hindu Kush to the Himalayas, down through
the subcontinent to Southeast Asia and around the tropics, seeking out the best
genetics and focusing on regions famous for their ancient cannabis traditions.
Around 1984 Ben began several
cross-breeding programs in order to develop new cannabis hybrids. He gained
access to the first examples of the new stabilized hybrids from the
US—including Haze and Skunk—and took the final step required for the creation
of new, world-class hybrids in Europe. By 1985 he had founded the Sensi Seed
Club, expanding and centralizing the process of creating hybrids and keeping
meticulous records of plant genealogy and interrelations.
The great thing about Ben Dronkers and Sensi Seeds is that it isn’t just about raking in the profits like most of the people in this great industry of ours. Sensi has garnered millions of dollars in sales over the years, but—aided and abetted by his friend Ed Rosenthal, the great American cannabis activist—Ben has dedicated a significant portion of his earnings to the creation of public benefit institutions like the Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum, the Sensi Museum Gallery, and the Cannabis College, which was initially a project of Flying Dutchmen. Among many other things, The Gallery displays Old Masters painted hundreds of years ago which depict ordinary men and women enjoying the smoking of cannabis.
Now these
institutions are lined up on the Achterburgwhal in the Red Light District in
the center of town, making up a sort of Green Light District of their own along
with the Sensi Seed Bank itself and the Sensi Corner Store, formerly the Sensi
coffeeshop where I used to hang out and got to know all these incredible people
that make up the Sensi empire.
One of my fondest
memories of the Sensi coffeeshop was the day I sat down with Ben Dronkers at a
table inside and listened while he carried on an intense conversation with a
South American man who turned out to be a minister in the new government of
Bolivia led by the former coca famer and now head of state, Evo Morales.
Evidently Ben and Evo had met and even toked down together on Morales’ visit to
Amsterdam before the Bolivian election, and Ben was making a impassioned plea
that the new government consider completely legalizing marijuana and establish
Bolivia as the world center of cannabis enlightenment.
Dronkers promised
that he would move his entire cannabis empire to Bolivia and encourage the
international growing community to do likewise, bringing incredible amounts of
new revenue to the small South American nation and transforming it into a haven
for the worldwide cannabis community of suppliers, growers and consumers.
I listened with
rapt attention as Ben’s argument unfolded, but the Bolivian minister calmly
explained that there was no chance that the church and moral authorities would
let them get away with it, no matter how great an idea it might be. Ben was
visibly dejected, but I guessed he was accustomed to official rejection of his visionary
ideas and the conversation passed on to more mundane topics.
Well, there were
several other topics I’d meant to discuss in this month’s column, but I got
carried away thinking about the greatness of Sensi Seeds and now I’m out of
space for this time. Of course I continue to feel that one day cannabis will be
granted its rightful place in our world of oppression, but it’s never going to
be an easy proposition and we’ll just have to keep on fighting every way we can
until that happy day. FREE THE WEED!
—Amsterdam
June 24, 2016
© 2016 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
